eps so marked a direction--a direction that made her, when she
perceived it, oppose a resistance that showed me she was freshly
mystified. "You're going to the water, Miss?--you think she's IN--?"

"She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very great. But
what I judge most likely is that she's on the spot from which, the other
day, we saw together what I told you."

"When she pretended not to see--?"

"With that astounding self-possession? I've always been sure she wanted
to go back alone. And now her brother has managed it for her."

Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. "You suppose they really
TALK of them?"

"I could meet this with a confidence! They say things that, if we heard
them, would simply appall us."

"And if she IS there--"

"Yes?"

"Then Miss Jessel is?"

"Beyond a doubt. You shall see."

"Oh, thank you!" my friend cried, planted so firm that, taking it in, I
went straight on without her. By the time I reached the pool, however,
she was close behind me, and I knew that, whatever, to her apprehension,
might befall me, the exposure of my society struck her as her least
danger. She exhaled a moan of relief as we at last came in sight of the
greater part of the water without a sight of the child. There was no
trace of Flora on that nearer side of the bank where my observation of
her had been most startling, and none on the opposite edge, where, save
for a margin of some twenty yards, a thick copse came down to the water.
The pond, oblong in shape, had a width so scant compared to its length
that, with its ends out of view, it might have been taken for a scant
river. We looked at the empty expanse, and then I felt the suggestion
of my friend's eyes. I knew what she meant and I replied with a negative
headshake.

"No, no; wait! She has taken the boat."

My companion stared at the vacant mooring place and then again across
the lake. "Then where is it?"

"Our not seeing it is the strongest of proofs. She has used it to go
over, and then has managed to hide it."

"All alone--that child?"

"She's not alone, and at such times she's not a child: she's an old,
old woman." I scanned all the visible shore while Mrs. Grose took again,
into the queer element I offered her, one of her plunges of submission;
then I pointed out that the boat might perfectly be in a small refuge
formed by one of the recesses of the pool, an indentation masked, for
the hither side, by a projection of the